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The cases of two missing aboriginal women whose DNA was eventually found on serial killer Robert Pickton’s pig farm were temporarily closed based on hearsay and misinformation, witnesses told the Missing Women Inquiry on Monday.

Daphne Pierre testified she wasn’t told police had closed the file on her sister Jacqueline Murdock for four months when they wrongly believed she’d attended Vancouver’s St. Paul hospital after being reported missing.

“I was not aware of it,” said Pierre, who broke down several times on the stand.

Tanya Holyk’s case was similarly closed for three months based on secondhand information she was possibly spotted at a party.

Pickton, arrested in 2002 and now in prison for the second-degree murders of six women, was never convicted in the Murdock or Holyk’s slayings.

Murdock’s DNA was found on a used condom wrapper at the Pickton farm but police said it wasn’t enough to charge him.

Holyk’s DNA was also found on the farm following his arrest. The charge in that case were stayed.

Pierre said she reported her sister missing in August 1997 to Prince George, B.C., RCMP, who promised they would forward the file to Vancouver police.

She was never told the case had been shut because of inaccurate hospital information. She was also unaware it was a year before Vancouver police even received the file.

“I assumed the Vancouver Missing Persons Unit had been looking for her already,” she said.

Lila Purcell said Vancouver police never took her niece’s disappearance seriously.

Holyk’s mom, Dorothy Purcell, now dead, first reported her daughter missing in the fall of 1996. But the civilian clerk who took the report, Sandy Cameron, was dismissive, suggesting Holyk had simply abandoned her 11-month-old baby. She closed the file within weeks on information Holyk was possibly seen at a party.

Cameron is expected to testify next Monday.

Dorothy even wrote to the department to complain about Cameron’s attitude.

“She said Tanya was a cokehead who had abandoned her child,” Purcell read from the letter.